…and there was me, thinking I’d have to find a different tag-line for my blog, now I have achieved the PhD. But I find myself still in the thick of it with the ‘minor revisions’, so the ‘PhD, Poetry and Life’ tag-line stays for a couple of months at least. This week has been all about coming down from the viva-high and approaching the revisions. And poetry, of course.

Saturday and Sunday I was totally out of it, I could hardly stay awake. I think I used up so much nervous energy and adrenalin over the viva, I just wanted to sleep it off. Monday I was working at the Black Ladd as usual, so it was Tuesday before I could take a look at the ‘minor revisions’ and see what they entailed. After a visit to the hairdresser on Tuesday morning, and calling at the pharmacy for a prescription to be told my medication is rationed—again—due to the bloody B word (grrrr!) I came home to work. But the best laid plans of mice and women…I had a phone call from my daughter, Amie, asking if I could doggy-sit her sister-in-law’s Cavoodle (Cavalier King Charles/poodle cross), as sister-in-law had a funeral to go to. Of course I said yes. My plan was to take Lulu up to the study with me and work while she had doggy snoozes on the futon. Lulu had different ideas. She is not a dog to be ignored, spent the morning making sure we noticed her. A proper drama queen, she wouldn’t rest, was on our knees, licking faces, jumping from one to the other of us. Snacks? No thank you, just attention. I took her out for a walk, it did nothing to calm her down. We had to put her into the conservatory so we could have lunch, a kind of respite break for us. After lunch we took her to Diggle for a walk along the canal to Grandpa Greene’s: a doggy sausage for Lulu and a coffee for us. She did slow down a bit when we got home and even dozed for a while; but by then work was a no-no for the day. She is a lovely dog, friendly—a bit too friendly—and cute but so demanding of attention. By the time she calmed down after the walk, I was exhausted. I left work alone until Wednesday.

But Wednesday wasn’t the best day for work either. My lovely cat, Rosie Parker had to go to the vet for dental work. She has an auto-immune disease that attacks her teeth beneath the gum-line, so she had to have six extractions, poor thing. We got her to the vet for 8.15 a.m. Worrying about your cat isn’t the best climate for work. I did read the viva report to check out the revisions; I read the comments on the thesis from the external examiner. I emailed Antony, my Director of Studies, to discuss the best way to approach the revisions. Then I put them and the thesis aside to prepare for a poetry reading in the evening, sorting and practising my fifteen minute set.

Wednesday evening was the Lancaster launch of the second Dragon Spawn pamphlet from Beautiful Dragons Press, and Barbara Hickson, one of the three latest spawn of the dragon, had asked Hilary and me, as first-born spawn, to read from our own pamphlet at the launch. I prepared a set that included some more recent poems as well as a set from Some Mothers Do... (DragonSpawn Press 2018) I timed them in the reading: it’s bad manners, and unprofessional, to over-run your time allocation. After lunch we went to the vet to collect Rosie. She came home with medication. I’m reluctant to go poking around her sore mouth with a pipette, so I’ve been finding new and inventive ways to administer it: but she’s canny, and so far I guess she’s taken about 10% of her dose. Dairylea cheese? Nah! Double cream? Nah! Dripped onto wholemeal bread, which she usually loves? Nah. Yesterday, single cream seemed to do the trick, but even so I’m not completely sure it isn’t Jimbo who’s been lapping her spiked cream. Really, you can only do your best.

So, after she was home, and safely installed in her favourite hidey- hole under the futon in the study, I went with Hilary and her husband, David, to Lancaster for the launch. Bill stayed home to Rosie-sit. After a meal in a Turkish restaurant, Medusa, we went to the Royal King’s Arms for the launch. It was a lovely evening. Neither the two other poets in the collection, Gabriel Griffin and Bev Morris, nor Rebecca Bilkau, editor at Beautiful Dragons, could be there, so the poet Sarah Hymas chaired the evening. Barbara read from Rugged Rocks Ragged Rascals (DragonSpawn Press, 2019). Her poems are gentle but with an underlying depth of tenderness. Several of the poems deal with place: her regular visits to the Hebrides, or the hills and coastline of Lancashire and Cumbria, ‘where your name is written on the shore,/ each letter shaped by the wind…’ She read them beautifully. I would have liked to meet and hear the missing dragon sisters, but that’s a treat for the future. We both bought copies of the book, which she signed: ‘For Rachel—congratulations to us both! With love, Barbara.’ Hilary read next, a mixed set of pamphlet and newer poems, and my set was in the second half. Barbara’s nephew and his son provided music for the evening, guitar duets. It was an appropriately happy and celebratory event.

I’ve had several ‘congratulations’ cards in the post this week, including one from friend Joan, which had a string of letters on the envelope. It actually made me laugh out loud. It was addressed to Dr Rachel Davies, BEd (Hons), BA (Hons), Msc, MA (Dist), PhD. How ridiculous is that—a whole alphabet of letters after my name? I’m going to stop now. No really, I am.

Saturday I bit the bullet and sat down at my desk to make an attack on the revisions. Actually, they’re not as daunting as I thought when I first read them on Wednesday. How often does that happen: you take an initial reading and you just notice the scary stuff, the negative stuff. As a species we don’t tend to pick up on the positives. But we should. I read and took notes, corrected a few typos (despite the nit comb I used before I submitted the thesis back in May). I made a note of books I need to refer to when I get round to editing. I feel as if I pummelled the job into submission. It’s doable. I’m planning a visit to the library at MMU on Wednesday to check out the books I need. I hope they’ll let me in, now I’m not officially enrolled as a student any more. Hopefully my student card will still allow me access.

I spent the rest of the day putting some of the thesis poems together into a pamphlet to submit for publication. I chose twenty of the strongest—in my opinion—in the collection, including ten ‘alternative mothers’. It’s hard to get the tempo of a pamphlet right, to order them to show them off at their best. It took a time to get them sorted, and when I was satisfied I sent them out to the Mslexia/PBS competition, which closes tonight. Ambitious, but hey! We’ll see. I’ll send them to other places in the meantime.

So that’s it. Another full week where the PhD still looms large despite having achieved a pass. I called into the Halifax on Friday to see how I get my title changed on my accounts: ‘Mrs’ into ‘Dr’. It feels the right thing to do, especially as I divorced the Davies two decades ago. It’ll be good to get rid of that tie once and for all. But I have to wait a bit longer, apparently, until I get the official certificate. Ho hum, keep beavering away at the revisions, Rach.

Here’s a poem from the collection. I think it speaks for itself. It’s going to be published in the journal Domestic Cherry 7 in October: I’m going to read it at the journal’s launch during ‘The Big Poetry Weekend’, on Sunday, October 6th in Swindon. Hilary and I are going to the festival anyway, so it’ll be nice to contribute in a very small way.

Spooning

What I remember of the spoon is
how it was her crowd control at mealtimes
how she held it upright in her hand,
its handle to the table-top, how it tapped
a rhythm like a slow drum

how when we laughed we knew the spoon
would greet us with a firm handshake,
a spoon shaped bruise would raise itself
on the back of our hands, how we tried
not to laugh but it was a contagion

how you tried to drown your laughter
in a cup of tea but one snort spread tealeaves
across your face like freckles and we laughed,
laughed so much we knew. Here it comes now…

Rachel Davies

2016